17 minute read
Mapping Europe’s Highest Peak with a UAV
INSPECTING AND CAPTURING CABLE CAR ROUTES
Conquering Elbrus: Mapping Europe’s Highest Peak with a UAV
Mount Elbrus, with its peak of 5,642m, is the highest mountain in Europe. This makes it a remarkable attraction for adventurers, hikers and skiers from around the world, which calls for safe and permanent infrastructure. The main task of the aerial mission described in this article was to inspect the existing cable car route around the station of Garabashi and to create an accurate map of the area for the potential future extension of the cable car all the way up to the Priut station (4,050m).
CHALLENGES OF MAPPING AT HIGH ALTITUDE
Aerial photography in mountainous terrain has a vast number of specific features and limitations. For example, flights over mountainous regions are unpredictable due to the thin air and rapid changes in weather, as sudden storms and extremely cold weather are common even in the summer season. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operators needed to prepare themselves and their equipment carefully. For example, the altitude at Elbrus is high enough to require acclimatization, and increased liquid intake is required during the time spent in the mountains. From an equipment perspective, the main challenges lie in unspecified or incorrect terrain maps, which may cause a drone to crash. Limited altitude configurations may lead to poor quality data or even the loss of the drone, and magnetometer sensor malfunction in the zones of magnetic anomalies may lead to the loss of control of the drone or even the loss of the drone as a whole.
The other challenge is the terrain itself; for example, the team noticed that the take-off location had changed since they were previously in the area. The most suitable choice for an accurate and safe mission is vertical take-off and landing, as landing with a parachute will probably result in the loss of the aircraft due to wind drift and the inability to locate the device in mountainous terrain. Elbrus is a glaciated stratovolcano that is rich with iron, and areas above 3,000m are heavily glaciated, presenting an additional challenge as the surface tends to change due to melting ice and shifting stones. The high volume of iron also interferes with radio signals.
Time sensitivity was an additional challenge as weather changes can disrupt the mission and a one-day mission can stretch into a week. In this particular case, the team was able to execute all the mission flights within one day.
CHOICE OF EQUIPMENT
View of the cable car route and the Mt. Elbrus peaks. Equipped FIXAR 007 at Mt. Elbus.
location features and set up equipment that is able to withstand the challenges of working at high altitude, as several previous takes by other teams proved not to be up to the task. For example, copter drones suffered from GPS losses and interference from geomagnetic anomalies, which led to magnetometric sensor malfunction. This resulted in the drone landing somewhere in the mountain area or returning to the start position and aborting the mission. Another fixed-wing solution with a launch catapult system was tried, but was also unsuccessful as the drone landed with its parachute system in an inaccessible area, plus it could only be used up to 3,600m, which is not high enough.
The team chose the fixed-wing autonomous vertical take-off and landing drone Fixar 007 equipped with a Sony A6000 camera for photo image capture and a post-processing kinematic (PPK) sensor for precise positioning for post-processing. This solution was chosen as it is resilient to geomagnetic anomalies as it has no magnetometer sensors onboard, it has a proprietary autopilot system, and it is designed to fly above 4,000m. The drone is equipped with special propelling systems for missions above 3,000m to ensure operations in thin air conditions. Additionally, an aerodynamic design and wind resistance of 12m/s made it suitable for use in the mountainous area.
The drone system allows altitude changes within a single mission and ensures landing with 2m precision, avoiding equipment damage or loss. The default terrain tracking of the unit made it possible to execute flights safely and with high precision. The team also required additional equipment such as a diesel power generator to charge the mission planner computer, as the lithium-ion batteries in the computer discharge significantly faster at high altitudes, limiting the mission planning software running time to 20 minutes. Performance of the UAV’s Li-po batteries was not affected by the high altitude.
3D model.
Orthomosaic of the mapped area.
DATA COLLECTION
To collect high-quality data, an autonomous approach was chosen as this ensured stable and safe flights. The mission was split into four flights which were designed in the mission planning software xGroundControl before arriving at the flight location, reducing the time spent on-site. As the drone had to change altitude during the mission, it experienced temperature changes which could result in water build-up in the equipment. In this case, no build-up was identified, even after a temperature change from below to above 0°C. The default terrain tracking provided
additional safety and precision in the mountainous terrain. As a result, detailed images of the terrain with a total area of 8.2km2 were captured with a resolution of 5cm/pixel for a total period of four hours, operating a FIXAR 007 with an onboard equipment weight of 1,000g. The PPK technology was used for mapping as RTK (real-time kinematic) technology is limited in mountains due to the GPS signal interference.
3D MODEL FOR CABLE CAR ROUTE
In changing weather conditions in high mountainous terrain, high-quality photographic material was gathered to inspect the planned cable car route and to be used later for the design and construction of the new cable car.
Metashape software was used for the postprocessing to build detailed orthomosaic and
3D models for further area examination and construction evaluation.
Link to 3D model: https://fixar.nira.app/a/ bs3RSeDWRnGxvXDc0wPh8A/1 Video: https://youtu.be/MZLQjaQldY0
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Vasily Lukashov is the founder& CEO of FIXAR. He is an engineer, developer and innovator of unmanned aerial solutions with deep roots in the industry since a young age. He developed the FIXAR 007 model with its aerodynamic design and patented fixed-angle-rotor configuration that avoids dead weight. He has considerable experience in aeromodelling and aviation in business, education and competition settings.
Laine Kuzmane has extensive experience in content creation for unmanned aerial solutions and application industries, with a background in journalism, public relations and marketing, having successfully driven communication at international manufacturing companies. She currently holds a marketing position at the full-stack UAV development start-up FIXAR.
THE CURRENT SITUATION IN UKRAINE
Cadastre in Wartime
Despite the current conflict, the topographic and cadastral land-register services of the Ukrainian StateGeoCadastre are still operational, certainly in the regions where the country is not under attack. Restricted public access to information is the main difference between the cadastre during wartime and the cadastre in peacetime, besides of course the concerns about staff and systems. Major projects, such as facilitating the sale of state-owned land, have been put on hold.
When asked about the challenges his organization faces today, Serhii Zavadskyi, head of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre (StateGeoCadastre) in Kiev, stays admirably calm: “About 50 of our regional offices have been seized by the occupants and are totally unavailable at present. Eight of our premises are seriously affected as a result of the Russian Federation’s armed invasion. To ensure that the organization can continue to function, personnel from the regional offices that are under occupation have been or will be partially transferred to other regions or cities in Ukraine. We have made backups of our data so it is safe. We keep copies of all essential databases on different servers, with restricted access.”
StateGeoCadastre is a huge organization with around 10,000 employees and hundreds of points of contact in the regions. But then, Ukraine is a very large country; comprising more than 600,000km2, it ranks 46th in the world in terms of size. StateGeoCadastre is responsible for the geodetic surveying and mapping of this vast area, as well as the cartographic registration of cadastral parcels and the title registration of land. The registration of property titles is done by another government agency, the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate.
Serhii Zavadskyi: “People are the most essential resource for StateGeoCadastre in all of its activities.” (Image courtesy: StateGeoCadastre)
LACK OF STAFF
The 100% publicly financed institution still has some financial resources, but they are now more limited since the war means that the state’s funds are needed for other purposes. That is a source of great concern at StateGeoCadastre’s head office, although that is not what kept Serhii Zavadskyi awake at night at the beginning of the war. “One of the major worries was the lack of staff. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 123 StateGeoCadastre employees have joined the armed forces, plus we are keeping a close eye on all our employees who remain in Ukrainian territory that has been seized by
the aggressor. Fortunately, none of our staff have been physically injured, but everyone has clearly sustained some emotional and psychological damage,” he explains. “However, people have mobilized; even in the absence of proper resources, everyone is trying to protect the nation. When it comes to the defence of our state, there is a higher degree of understanding. Because of the elimination of bureaucratic barriers and our focus on the accomplishment of the ultimate aim – military victory – any critical process can be completed in a couple of hours. As a result, people are the most essential resource for StateGeoCadastre in all of its activities.”
SATELLITES
What also helps is Elon Musk’s satellite infrastructure: Starlink. SpaceX quickly responded to the Ukrainian government’s call on Twitter to help keep the internet working in war-struck Ukraine even when there are power outages. Today, more than 10,000 stations help connect and support critical energy and telecommunications facilities, healthcare and other facilities. StateGeoCadastre was given ten Starlink units throughout the country. Currently, internet quality from Starlink in eastern Ukraine is not as good as in the west because Ukraine does not have its own Starlink ground station. But no war, no matter how destructive, can last forever. The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced that “after the victory, together with Elon Musk, we plan to build our own Starlink ground station to improve the quality of satellite Internet for all Ukrainians.”
Still on the topic of satellites, even in the current circumstances StateGeoCadastre has not replaced aerial photography or ground-based surveying with satellite images. Zavadskyi: “They are sometimes used as input for certain hybrid monitoring activities. But the images from space are not the answer to today’s challenges, whereas traditional surveying is often more suitable for updating basemaps in severely damaged urban areas and so on.” This does not mean that StateGeoCadastre is not interested in Earth observation and satellite positioning-based initiatives like EUSpace4Ukraine (see box) aimed at helping to tackle the humanitarian challenges in the country. StateGeoCadastre intends to make use of the platform if necessary, but so far that has not been the case according to Zavadskyi. Many regional offices are seriously affected, such as in Prymorsk. (Image courtesy: StateGeoCadastre)
BE PREPARED
When asked what advice he would give to comparable organizations elsewhere to ensure they are prepared for a war, Zavadskyi says: “Transferring data to cloud storage is the best option. Do something about the legal obstacles if they still exist. There should be a strategy in place for evacuating the database in the event, and the procedures should be regularly tested in real life.”
“Secondly, data is normally kept in two secure data centres: the primary and the backup, which must be located a significant distance apart from one another. It’s necessary to develop a high-quality geospatial data infrastructure and geoinformation tools, allowing users to deal with data in both secure and public modes. And thirdly, it’s important to devise an effective means to shield information from the enemy, and to reconsider the notion of making public data as open as possible for re-use,” he adds.
DATA BREACHES
So far, there has been no evidence of a data breach by the Russians in Ukraine; any cartographic resources have been given with the permission of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ topographic service. However, all geospatial data owners and producers have been advised to stop publishing and disseminating geodata via geoportals in order to prevent database breaches. Zavadskyi observes: “The lack of unrestricted public access to information is what distinguishes the cadastre in conflict from the cadastre in peacetime. Everything is still in place in terms of developing and maintaining the registers. One of the most difficult issues following the war may be the demand for information such as up-to-date topography in
the liberated regions. However, we have no way of yet comprehending how serious these issues will be for us and our fellow public administrations. And there are some things that you can’t prepare for. For instance, the Ukrainian global positioning system is partly functioning. Station disassembly is a serious issue everywhere. Most ground stations are operational; they work in collaboration with other commercial networks. But as for the stations that exist in the territories temporarily controlled by the Russians, we have no idea what has happened to them.”
LAND REFORM
Another huge challenge Ukraine has to tackle (with support of The World Bank and others) is that the country is in the midst of a land market reform, with StateGeoCadastre playing a leading part in the execution. Of Ukraine’s total land area of 60 million hectares, roughly 42 million is classified as agricultural land. 25% of all agricultural land is owned by the state. The rest was distributed in small parcels some 20 years ago among members of former communist collective farms. The owners either lease this land to large agricultural holdings or farm the land themselves, although there are about seven million small landowners in Ukraine. In 2021, laws were passed to open up the agricultural land market. To give ‘small’ farmers a head start, in the initial years a Ukrainian citizen can buy a maximum of 100 hectares (aided by cheap loans). From January 2024, this will increase to a maximum of 10,000 hectares for all Ukrainian citizens/ legal entities. A referendum is set to decide whether foreigners should continue to be excluded. However, this reform project has been put on hold during the Russian military invasion.
“We were absolutely ready to launch the land market reform,” states the head of StateGeoCadastre firmly. Since the majority of the state land it is not currently properly marked in the cadastre, the organization had started to train regional land surveying engineers in the accurate demarcation and registration of cadastral plots. The introduction of automatic information exchange with the State Register of Titles has also been an important step. The same goes for the countrywide deployment of a geoportal, which delivers the essential information to notaries and other stakeholders.
Apart from supporting the land reform, the geoportal will contribute to making geospatial public data more accessible to the Ukrainian public and private sectors. It will be easier to disseminate the 1:50,000 scale digital topographic map and the topographic database about the Ukrainian territory. The organization was planning to follow these with maps at 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scales, as well as procedures for real-time updates and the rollout of a geographical names system, and so on. There were also plans to launch remote sensing for tracking land usage and the evolution of natural resources. “After the war, the projects can immediately be resumed in full capacity,” he says resolutely.
ACCELERATE THE VICTORY
Zavadskyi concludes the interview with a heartfelt statement: “The cruel war that the Russian Federation has been waging against
50 premises are presently totally unavailable, such as the destroyed regional office in Bahmyt. (Image courtesy: StateGeoCadastre)
us since 24 February has brought much sorrow and suffering. All StateGeoCadastre employees continue to work despite the full-scale invasion and are doing their best to accelerate our victory. That is now the focus of the Ukrainians, as well as on providing assistance to our armed forces, which are bravely defending Ukraine and keep risking their lives for our country every single day. I know that Ukraine is not alone in her endeavour to win and to rebuild everything that was inhumanely destroyed. These trying times have truly shown us the many international, real friends and of that I am very proud. After all, in the fight against evil, it is important to be united.”
Vitali Klitschko, Mayor of Kiev, and his brother Wladimir Klitschko with the Starlink terminals provided by SpaceX to keep the internet working during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frédérique Coumans is contributing editor for GIM International. For more than 25 years, she has been covering all aspects of spatial data infrastructures as editor-in-chief of various magazines on GIS, data mining and the use of GIS in business. She lives near Brussels, Belgium.
THE EU SPACE FOR UKRAINE PLATFORM:
Stimulating the Use of EO and Satellite Positioning in the Ukrainian Relief Effort
The EUSpace4Ukraine platform focuses on satellite data-based applications that help to deliver medical and food supplies, support evacuation efforts and also help refugees find their way in other EU countries. The platform has been initiated by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme.
By fostering the development of competitive Earth observation (EO) applications, the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) – which has its head office in Prague, Czech Republic – contributes to stimulate innovation-based growth in the European economy. At the same time, the agency aims to contribute to the safety of EU citizens and the security of the member states. In April 2022, EUSPA worked together with the European Commission to create the EUSpace4Ukraine platform. The platform is aimed at matching developers of EO and navigation apps with NGOs and other ‘helpers’ in war-torn Ukraine. The applications can incorporate satellite data from any distributor and are publicly available online.
Rodrigo da Costa, executive director of EUSPA, comments: “We want to mobilize the EU space innovation community to provide technological solutions that can enhance humanitarian support for the Ukrainian people. Eight colleagues with knowledge of space technologies are working, part-time, on the EUSpace4Ukraine task force.” The multidisciplinary team is currently spending most of its time communicating with interested parties to better understand their needs and explain the platform’s processes and activities. As of mid-June, the platform listed projects from 27 organizations: 17 application developers and 10 user organizations and data providers. A hackathon event was organized in early July to attract new participants and further encourage the development of new applications using data from the EU Space Programme.
APPLICATION SPECTRUM
Rather than being aimed at helping the Ukrainian army or assisting the prosecution of war crimes, the EUSpace4Ukraine initiative is focused on ‘humanitarian support’. This covers a wide range of uses: from supporting NGOs delivering medical goods using drones, to practical solutions that help people fleeing the war to integrate into life in EU countries. “Earth observation data might also contribute to analysing the effects of the war in Ukraine, such as evaluating distribution routes, assessing the post-event damage or supporting agriculture and forestry,” adds Da Costa. “Some of the solutions listed under the EUSpace4Ukraine initiative can provide Copernicus data as well as processing and dissemination capabilities that can help in updating base maps. That is a challenging task, particularly in areas that face dramatic changes in infrastructure and land cover as a result of the bombing.”
The humanitarian support also extends beyond the Ukrainian borders and could involve ‘normal’ GIS applications. “For example, mobile applications that help people integrate in a new country utilize maps showing important points of interest such as medical facilities, schools and addresses for local support,” he explains.
According to the EUSPA executive director, there are some challenges that must be permanently addressed: “Thanks to testimonials of refugees and NGOs operating at the borders, we have identified several challenges and areas of need. Potentially helpful solutions to address these include: 1) Applications for safe, timely and accurate navigation for population migration, 2) The provision of online platforms for the coordination of public/ private helpers, 3) Applications to help the understanding and inventorying of damage in Ukraine territories, and (4) safety and rescue solutions.”
MORE INFO
https://www.euspa.europa.eu/euspace4ukraine
